A Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled Thursday that Elon Musk has until Oct. 28 to close his acquisition of Twitter if he wants to avoid a trial, granting Musk a slight delay.
Earlier in the day, the Telsa CEO said he wanted to return to his original agreement to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, and asked the social media company to end all litigation in order to close the deal. Twitter refused to oblige.
In a filing with Delaware’s Court of Chancery on Thursday, Musk’s side said Twitter should drop the court date scheduled for Oct. 17, so that the necessary financing can be pulled together to wrap up the acquisition by Oct. 28.
“Twitter will not take yes for an answer,” the filing says. “Astonishingly, they have insisted on proceeding with this litigation, recklessly putting the deal at risk and gambling with their stockholders’ interests.” Musk argued that the trial would distract his team from securing the financing necessary to close the deal.
In this photo illustration, the image of Elon Musk is displayed on a computer screen and the logo of twitter on a mobile phone in Ankara, Turkiye on October 06, 2022.
Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
In a filing later on Thursday, Twitter responded by saying that Musk and his legal team are being disingenuous. Only days before a trial was to commence, Musk’s team suddenly declares “they intend to close after all,” the lawyers wrote.
“‘Trust us,’ they say, ‘we mean it this time,’ and so they ask to be relieved from a reckoning on the merits,” Twitter’s side said. “To justify that relief, they propose an order that allows them an indefinite time to close on the basis of a conditional withdrawal of their unlawful notices of termination coupled with an explicit reservation of all ‘claims and defenses in the event a closing does not occur.'”
The Twitter lawyers added that Musk’s “proposal is an invitation to further mischief and delay.”
Twitter sued Musk in July to try and force the world’s richest person to stick to his purchase agreement, which was signed in April. Musk appeared ready to take the case to court, as legions of his text messages were released in preliminary filings.
While Twitter shareholders, at the company’s recommendation, agreed to Musk’s purchase price in September, Twitter may now be reluctant to walk away from its lawsuit without certainty that all the financing is available to close the deal.
Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are among the banks that originally agreed to provide $12.5 billion in debt for Musk. Since then the markets have tanked, particularly for risky tech assets.
Musk’s attorneys said that “By far the most likely possibility is that the debt is funded in which case the deal will close on or around October 28.” The lawyers added that “counsel for the debt financing parties has advised that each of their clients is prepared to honor its obligations under the Bank Debt Commitment Letter on the terms and subject to satisfaction of the conditions set forth therein.”
Twitter said in the legal filing that the Musk parties “should be arranging to close on Monday, October 10,” but is instead refusing to “commit to any closing date.”
“They ask for an open-ended out, at the expense of Twitter’s stockholders (who are owed $44 billion plus interest), all the while remaining free to change their minds again or to invent new grounds to avoid the contract ‘[w]ithout any admission of liability and without waiver of or prejudice to [their] claims and defenses,'” the attorneys wrote.
The Twitter lawyers also alleged that earlier in the day, an unnamed corporate representative of one of the leading banks involved in the deal “testified that Mr. Musk has yet to send them a borrowing notice and has not otherwise communicated to them that he intends to close the transaction, let alone on any particular timeline.”
“The bank further testified that the main task necessary to close the deal —memorializing the debt financing — could have happened in July but didn’t because Mr. Musk purported to terminate the deal,” the Twitter attorneys added.
Earlier this week, Twitter acknowledged that it had received the letter from Musk and his attorneys in which they expressed their wish to buy Twitter for the original agreed-upon price. Twitter said in a response to the letter that “The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.” However, this is the first time since then that Twitter has commented on the litigation.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visits “Making Money With Charles Payne” at Fox Business Network Studios in New York on Dec. 4, 2024.
Mike Coppola | Getty Images
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s sister, Ann Altman, filed a lawsuit on Monday, alleging that her brother sexually abused her regularly between the years of 1997 and 2006.
The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri, alleges that the abuse took place at the family’s home in Clayton, Missouri, and began when Ann, who goes by Annie, was three and Sam was 12. The filing claims that the abusive activities took place “several times per week,” beginning with oral sex and later involving penetration.
The lawsuit claims that “as a direct and proximate result of the foregoing acts of sexual assault,” the plaintiff has experienced “severe emotional distress, mental anguish, and depression, which is expected to continue into the future.”
The younger Altman has publicly made similar sexual assault allegations against her brother in the past on platforms like X, but this is the first time she’s taken him to court. She’s being represented by Ryan Mahoney, whose Illinois-based firm specializes in matters including sexual assault and harassment.
The lawsuit requests a jury trial and damages in excess of $75,000.
In a joint statement on X with his mother, Connie, and his brothers Jack and Max, Sam Altman denied the allegations.
“Annie has made deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims about our family, and especially Sam,” the statement said. “We’ve chosen not to respond publicly, out of respect for her privacy and our own. However, she has now taken legal action against Sam, and we feel we have no choice but to address this.”
Their response says “all of these claims are utterly untrue,” adding that “this situation causes immense pain to our entire family.” They said that Ann Altman faces “mental health challenges” and “refuses conventional treatment and lashes out at family members who are genuinely trying to help.”
Sam Altman has gained international prominence since OpenAI’s debut of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022. Backed by Microsoft, the company was most recently valued at $157 billion, with funding coming from Thrive Capital, chipmaker Nvidia, SoftBank and others.
Altman was briefly ousted from the CEO role by OpenAI’s board in November 2023, but was quickly reinstated due to pressure from investors and employees.
This isn’t the only lawsuit the tech exec faces.
In March, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sued OpenAI and co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman, alleging breach of contract and fiduciary duty. Musk, who now runs a competing AI startup, xAI, was a co-founder of OpenAI when it began as a nonprofit in 2015. Musk left the board in 2018 and has publicly criticized OpenAI for allegedly abandoning its original mission.
Musk is suing to keep OpenAI from turning into a for-profit company. In June, Musk withdrew the original complaint filed in a San Francisco state court and later refiled in federal court.
Last month, OpenAI clapped back against Musk, claiming in a blog post that in 2017 Musk “not only wanted, but actually created, a for-profit” to serve as the company’s proposed new structure.
This photo illustration created on January 7, 2025, in Washington, DC, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.
Drew Angerer | Afp | Getty Images
Meta employees took to their internal forum on Tuesday, criticizing the company’s decision to end third-party fact-checking on its services two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Company employees voiced their concern after Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer and former White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush, announced the content policy changes on Workplace, the in-house communications tool.
“We’re optimistic that these changes help us return to that fundamental commitment to free expression,” Kaplan wrote in the post, which was reviewed by CNBC.
The content policy announcement follows a string of decisions that appear targeted to appease the incoming administration. On Monday, Meta added new members to its board, including UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime friend of Trump, and the company confirmed last month that it was contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Among the latest changes, Kaplan announced that Meta will scrap its fact-checking program and shift to a user-generated system like X’s Community Notes. Kaplan, who took over his new role last week, also said that Meta will lift restrictions on certain topics and focus its enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations while giving users “a more personalized approach to political content.”
One worker wrote they were “extremely concerned” about the decision, saying it appears Meta is “sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and conflating that with a victory for free speech.”
Another employee commented that by “simply absolving ourselves from the duty to at least try to create a safe and respective platform is a really sad direction to take.” Other comments expressed concern about the impact the policy change could have on the discourse around topics like immigration, gender identity and gender, which, according to one employee, could result in an “influx of racist and transphobic content.”
A separate employee said they were scared that “we’re entering into really dangerous territory by paving the way for the further spread of misinformation.”
The changes weren’t universally criticized, as some Meta workers congratulated the company’s decision to end third-party fact checking. One wrote that X’s Community Notes feature has “proven to be a much better representation of the ground truth.”
Another employee commented that the company should “provide an accounting of the worst outcomes of the early years” that necessitated the creation of a third-party fact-checking program and whether the new policies would prevent the same type of fall out from happening again.
As part of the company’s massive layoffs in 2023, Meta also scrapped an internal fact-checking project, CNBC reported. That project would have let third-party fact checkers like the Associated Press and Reuters, in addition to credible experts, comment on flagged articles in order to verify the content.
Although Meta announced the end of its fact-checking program on Tuesday, the company had already been pulling it back. In September, a spokesperson for the AP told CNBC that the news agency’s “fact-checking agreement with Meta ended back in January” 2024.
Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship gestures as he speaks during a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., Oct. 27, 2024.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
After the announcement of White’s addition to the board on Monday, employees also posted criticism, questions and jokes on Workplace, according to posts reviewed by CNBC.
White, who has led UFC since 2001, became embroiled in controversy in 2023 after a video published by TMZ showed him slapping his wife at a New Year’s Eve party in Mexico. White issued a public apology, and his wife, Anne White, issued a statement to TMZ, calling it an isolated incident.
Commenters on Workplace made jokes asking whether performance reviews would now involve mixed martial arts style fights.
In addition to White, John Elkann, the CEO of Italian auto holding company Exor, was named to Meta’s board.
Some employees asked what value autos and entertainment executives could bring to Meta, and whether White’s addition reflects the company’s values. One post suggested the new board appointments would help with political alliances that could be valuable but could also change the company culture in unintended or unwanted ways.
Comments in Workplace alluding to White’s personal history were flagged and removed from the discussion, according to posts from the internal app read by CNBC.
An employee who said he was with Meta’s Internal Community Relations team, posted a reminder to Workplace about the company’s “community engagement expectations” policy, or CEE, for using the platform.
“Multiple comments have been flagged by the community for review,” the employee posted. “It’s important that we maintain a respectful work environment where people can do their best work.”
The internal community relations team member added that “insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or Board members is not aligned with the CEE.”
Several workers responded to that note saying that even respectful posts, if critical, had been removed, amounting to a corporate form of censorship.
One worker said that because critical comments were being removed, the person wanted to voice support for “women and all voices.”
Meta declined to comment.
— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Bitcoin slumped on Tuesday as a spike in Treasury yields weighed on risk assets broadly.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last lower by 4.8% at $97,183.80, according to Coin Metrics. The broader market of cryptocurrencies, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, dropped more than 5%.
The moves followed a sudden increase in the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield after data released by the Institute for Supply Management reflected faster-than-expected growth in the U.S. services sector in December, adding to concerns about stickier inflation. Rising yields tend to pressure growth oriented risk assets.
Bitcoin traded above $102,000 on Monday and is widely expected to about double this year from that level. Investors are hopeful that clearer regulation will support digital asset prices and in turn benefit stocks like Coinbase and Robinhood.
However, uncertainty about the path of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts could put bumps in the road for crypto prices. In December, the central bank signaled that although it was cutting rates a third time, it may do fewer rate cuts in 2025 than investors had anticipated. Historically, rate cuts have had a positive effect on bitcoin price while hikes have had a negative impact.
Bitcoin is up more than 3% since the start of the year. It posted a 120% gain for 2024.
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